American envoy to the UN Nikki Haley on Monday opposed a conference convened by the General Assembly to negotiate a legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, saying “bad actors” cannot be allowed to have the weapons as other nations try to maintain peace and safety.
“We would love to have a ban on nuclear weapons but in this day and time we cannot honestly say that we can protect our people by allowing the bad actors to have them and those of us who are good trying to keep the peace and safety not to have them,” Haley told reporters here.
Haley, joined by UK’s Ambassador to the UN Matthew Rycroft and her French counterpart Francois Delattre, spoke just before the General Assembly convened its first substantive session to negotiate the legally-binding instrument to ban nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.
She said the Assembly “suddenly” wants to have a hearing to ban nuclear weapons and while “as a mother and daughter” she wants a world with no nuclear weapons, one also has to be “realistic”.
“Is there anyone who believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weaponsIJ So what you would see is that the General Assembly would go through, in good faith, trying to do something but North Korea would be the one cheering and all of us and the people we represent would be the ones at risk,” she said.
She said Washington believes in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and had reduced its weapons by 85 per cent since the treaty went into place.
She added that while the US would want to see a world without nuclear weapons, the time for it is not today and it will defend its citizens as well as its friends and allies.